University of Arkansas is encouraging us to delete that app and stop feeding the feeds. A national study led by Dr. Brian Primack, dean of the College of Education and Health Professions, found that young adults who spent more than 300 minutes a day on social media were 2.3 times likelier to develop depression than those who spent fewer than 120 minutes:
The study, which will be published online Dec. 10 and is scheduled for the February 2021 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is the first large, national study to show a link between social media use and depression over time.
“Most prior work in this area has left us with the chicken-and-egg question,” said Primack. “We know from other large studies that depression and social media use tend to go together, but it’s been hard to figure out which came first. This new study sheds light on these questions, because high initial social media use led to increased rates of depression. However, initial depression did not lead to any change in social media use.”
In 2018, Primack and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh sampled more than 1,000 U.S. adults between 18 to 30. They measured depression using the validated nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire and asked participants about the amount of time they used social media on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, and SnapChat. Their analyses controlled for demographic factors like age, sex, race, education, income and employment, and they included survey weights so the results would reflect the greater U.S. population.
“One reason for these findings may be that social media takes up a lot of time,” said Dr. Cesar Escobar-Viera, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and co-author on the study. “Excess time on social media may displace forming more important in-person relationships, achieving personal or professional goals, or even simply having moments of valuable reflection.”
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I, of course, found this study on Reddit. Sigh.